White. — On the Native Dog of Neiv Zealand. 541 



a greyhound ; grey-haha, a slut (Skeat says not allied to 

 " gray," which is grar in Icelandic). In this I think he is 

 ^Yrong, for we have both "grey" and "gray" in English. 

 From the apparent coimection of these words we may safely 

 infer that the old-time dog was of a grey colour, and that 

 English stag-hounds and the greyhound are the least modified 

 from the original old-time dog — as also is proved by Assyrian 

 bas-reliefs or sculptures. Take the word "grin," to snarl, 

 grimace : Middle English, grennen ; Anglo-Saxon, grennian, 

 to grin ; Dutch, grinjen, to weep, fret ; Icelandic, grenja, to 

 howl ; Danish, grine, to grin, simper ; Swedish, grina ; Ger- 

 man, greinen ; and English, grimace, grind, gripe (to seize), 

 grip, grizzly, grizzled, grab, grasp, grope. These words all 

 refer to the characteristics of a grey animal, presumably the 

 dog. The English word ''grim, fierce — Anglo-Saxon grim, 

 allied to gram, fierce, angry, furious : Icelandic, grimmr, grim ; 

 gramr, angry : Danish, grim, grim ; gram, angry : German, 

 grimm, fury; gram, hostile:" &c. (Skeat) — shows parallel 

 changes = grey and gray, and is another dog word. 



The Maori also uses moi and ycropero in connection with 

 the dog. It is remarkable that pcrro is Spanish for dog. 

 Mr. W. H. Skinner says " Peropero " is used by the Maoris 

 to their dogs, as we call " Puss, puss," or " Chuck, chuck," 

 to cats and poultry. Moi is, I believe, connected with a 

 Maori story of a person of that name who was changed by 

 witchcraft into the form of a dog, which was proved by the 

 strange dog answering to the name when called by the lost 

 one's sister. 



The Maoris name a plant " poroporo " {Solanum aviculare), 

 which is allied to the potato and tomato, and bears large oval 

 berries or drupes, the size of a pigeon's egg, of a bright-orange 

 colour. The colour of these fruits gives a fair definition of 

 what I described as gamboge-yellow in a former paper — a 

 white dog with patches of gamboge-yellow, meaning thereby 

 a light-orange colour. This will give a better idea of the 

 colour meant, and might be one reason for the coupling- 

 together of "peropero" and "poroporo;" still, I have no 

 evidence of the white-orange-coloured dog occurring in the 

 North, where "Peropero" is used as a call for dogs. This 

 plant, also, I have not seen in the South Island, and the name 

 discussed is strictly confined to the North. 



In Mr. Tregear's paper I was much taken by the sketch 

 or figure showing an old form of tattoo formerly used by 

 the Maoris, called mohokuri. This was a marking of the 

 face by sections of three short parallel lines, and at once 

 reminded me of the black markings on dogs which were 

 described as freckled with black — that is, a few black hairs 

 close together here and there on a pure-white ground, but not 



